Author: TechBrunch
On Wednesday, Spotify launched a new personalized playlist designed to allow listeners to discover upcoming concerts in their area. The playlist entitled “Concerts Near Concerts” is updated every Wednesday, with 30 artists playing nearby, with full event details and ticket links. Spotify partners with ticketing platforms such as Axs, Dice, Eventbrite and Ticketmaster. Like other personalized playlists on Spotify, such as “Daylist” and various “mixes”, “Concerts Near the Concert” will tailor the user's listening habits to help them discover their beloved artists. To receive the latest show updates, listeners should make sure they share their location through the “Live Events”…
Over the past few years, developers have been complaining more and more about paying Apple or Google about App Store or Play Store Distributions. App makers often say it makes it difficult for both companies to make money outside of the system. New York-based app revenue management platform Adapty wants to change it with a new product called Funnelfox. The idea behind Funnelfox is simple. It helps app makers create quizzes and experiences on the web to attract or mount customers. Also, when customers pay, they get a link to download the app. This means that app makers do not…
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Tiktok is partnering with National Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to provide real-time Amber alerts directly to users for its US feed, the company announced Thursday. This new feature will activate Amber Alerts by law enforcement and alerts will appear in your feed if you are in the specified search area. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Tiktok is identifying whether users are within a specific search through the device's IP address. The alerts include important details available in standard Amber Alerts, including children's photos, descriptions, last known locations, and other important information that will help you search. According to…
Pruna AI, a European startup working on compression algorithms for AI models, has made its optimization framework open source on Thursday. Pruna AI creates a framework that applies several efficient methods to specific AI models, such as caching, pruning, quantization, and distillation. “We standardize the storage and loading of compression models, apply a combination of these compression methods, and evaluate the compression model after compression,” Pruna AI co-fonder and CTO John Rachwan told TechCrunch. In particular, the Pruna AI framework can assess whether large quality losses occur after compressing the model and performance can be obtained. “If I use metaphors,…
The Swedish startup, which is aiming to build a hyperscale cloud company in Europe, has raised 50.6 million euros ($55 million) in Series A funding. Evroc says it lays the foundation for a “safe, sovereign and sustainable hyperscale cloud to rethink Europe's digital future,” as it is called. The announcement comes amid an increase in calls to create a European tech stack independent of the US tech companies and the changing political landscape. Just this week, a coalition from across the European tech industry sought “radical action” from lawmakers to reduce local reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure, pushing for homemade…
Michael Sabel announced late Wednesday at X that he was moving to the “Partner Honor” role after more than 12 years with the famous accelerator Y-combinator. Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan shared the news individually in a company blog post, highlighting Seibel's long history with his costume. Seibel first joined YC as the founder and passed the program twice. One on streaming startup Justin.TV, then on streaming app SocialCam. Seibel later served as group partner, managing director and CEO of YC Accelerator. In particular, Seibel has recently returned to the role of a group partner that is already less operational.…
Debt collection in emerging markets can often feel outdated and costly. As consumer lending surges and regulators push for more fair practices, legacy collection outfits have struggled to maintain their pace. ClearGrid aims to modernize debt collection and recovery with AI. The Dubai-based startup has emerged from stealth with $10 million in funds ($3.5 million preseeds and $6.5 million seeds), helping banks, fintechs and lenders collect more debt without resorting to customer harassment. For startups founded in May 2023, backing is important. Co-founder and CEO Mohammed Al Zaben called it an important advantage for “a very ambitious company with a…
Wiz's $32 billion all-cash acquisition by Google Parent Alphabet promises a huge payday for early-stage investors in cybersecurity startups. The deal is a big win for Sequoia, one of the most well-known VC companies, which is supposed to earn $3 billion, about 25 times the money they invested in the company. Despite the substantial returns of Sequoia's Limited Partners, their percentage benefits are far less than those of another early Wiz supporter, Israel-based VC CyberStarts. Cybersecurity-centric Cyberstotte invested $6.4 million in With's seed round from its first $54 million fund in February 2020. Today, the fund owns 4.1% of WIZ.…
There is a shady industry for those who want to monitor and spy on their families. Several app makers sell software (sometimes called stalkerware) to jealous partners who can use these apps to remotely access victims' phones. But despite how sensitive this data is, the number of these companies is on the rise in massive decline. According to TechCrunch's Tally, counting the latest data breaches for Spyx, there have been at least 25 Stalkerware companies since 2017 that have been known to have been hacked or leaked customer and victim data online. That's not a typo. At least 25 Stalkerware…